Don't Go To Sleep With Your Boots On
by celestial1
Summary: After the explosion in 1x10, Stella goes to check on an injured teammate.


**author's note**. Yes, a defunct Australian cop drama is a really strange thing for this American housewife to get hooked on, but in my defense, it's a really good show. I actually started with the Michael Dies episodes, which was fine, but I should have quit while I was ahead. Instead I then went and watched the first 3 seasons of the show, which meant I fell in love with the character even though I knew he was getting killed off. But I couldn't help it. 'Rush' show reminds me a lot of the early seasons of NCIS, and as such, it's not terribly surprising that it led me to write fiction.

And I am just pretending that all of Season 4 never took place. No Charlie, no Raineys, no Christian kissing on girls not his wife, and _most importantly_ no dead animal passing for hair on Josh's head. Denial is a perfectly healthy and rational coping mechanism. Yep.

* * *

><p><em>Guns, knives, machetes, break-and-enters, car crashes, murders, all that I can handle, all that's fine. But bombs? Bombs, not so much.<em>

_- _Michael Sandrelli

Stella eventually gives up on getting answers from the hospital staff, and goes looking for him herself. The hospital is crawling with cops, anyway, and she needs a distraction from waiting to hear word on Dom and Grace. The sitting and waiting is going to drive her crazy. She scares the pants off of a couple of patients in the ER, bursting in on them in full Tactical Response kit, but her "Gotcha!" at finally finding Michael doesn't even elicit a response.

"Hey, you," Stella says in a more subdued tone. Michael is laying on his side on the gurney, fully dressed, arms folded across his chest and looking utterly miserable. "You're not going to get out of cleaning the car that easy."

Looking down at Michael, it's weird for her to think he's just twenty-three. Half the time he seems older and half the time he seems younger, so she reckons it averages out. And he's kind of an idiot sometimes but he's got his stuff together, much more so than she did when she was twenty-three. Not for the first time, Stella wishes she'd met him years ago.

He won't turn and look at her, so she circles around the room to meet his eyes. "You look like crap, Michael," she cheerfully points out. He's got a couple of butterfly bandages up near his hairline, and they've cleaned him up a bit, but he still looks like he's been through a war.

"It's not all blood," Michael says, still not looking at her.

Stella grins. "Right, yeah, the ink bomb. Nothing gets that off." He doesn't respond. "I could find a red Sharpie and color the rest of your face to match?" Still nothing. "Hey, how's your head?"

Michael groans and buries his face in the pillow. "It bloody _hurts_, Stella, what a _stupid_ question."

"Anything I can do?"

"You can go away and let me sleep," he snaps. "And you can tell these sadistic nurses to stop asking me questions every five minutes. It's Michael," he adds in a much louder voice, addressing himself not to Stella but the annoyed woman in scrubs at the triage desk. "My name is Michael. M-I-C-H-A-E-L. Write it down if you can't remember."

"You've got a concussion, you idiot," Stella reminds him. "It's standard procedure."

"I know," Michael huffs. "It's my second time this month."

"Yeah, it's a good thing you've got such a thick head," Stella agrees. "Still, try to avoid MVAs and bombs for a little while. I don't think you can afford to get any dumber." Michael just closes his eyes. "Hey, you mind telling me what you're so pissed off about, Sandrelli?"

"How about I've got a concussion and you won't shut up?"

"Nah, that's not it," Stella says. "I mean, look at you. I can read you like a book. So give it up." Stella cocks her head at him and purses her lips. "You're angry about Dom, aren't you."

"Fine." Michael flops onto his back, looking up at the ceiling so he won't have to meet her eyes. "You want to talk about Dom? Now we're talking about Dom."

"Dom, yeah." Stella sits on the narrow gurney, down near Michael's feet. "Listen, he's going to be okay, all right?"

"Do you know that or are you just saying?"

Stella looks down at her hands. "I guess I don't really know that," she admits. "He's in critical, and it doesn't look too good. I'm trying to stay positive here, Michael. Someone has to."

"I just - I keep seeing it," Michael says. "I called his name and he - he turned and looked at me. He was looking right at me when the bomb went off."

"So he turned his head at the last minute," Stella points out. "You might have saved his life."

"Why did I stop?" He closes his eyes, reliving the moment, possibly the last moment he's seen his teammate alive. "I could have rushed him. Dom's a big guy but I'm pretty sure I could have taken him down... I could've..."

"You could have what?" Stella pushes. "You could have got yourself blown up too, Michael, and don't think for a moment it's any better you than him."

Michael shakes his head, even though the action makes him dizzy. "I don't have a wife and kid, Stel."

"You can't think like that," Stella tells him. "Do you think Dom holds back because of Sandrine and the baby?"

She seems to be waiting for an answer. "No," Michael says finally.

"No, he doesn't," Stella agrees. "If he did, or any of us did, this team would fall apart in a minute."

She's right, of course, but he's not in a particularly giving mood. "Okay."

"Why did you go after him?" she asks him suddenly, the question slipping out before she can prevent it. "We secured the building, we were evacuating the area. Why would you go back in?"

"Because he was right," Michael tells her. "It was too easy. It was way too much set-up for just a couple of ink bombs. There had to be something bigger."

"So you ran into a rigged-up car park just to save Dom's -"

"Yeah," Michael interrupts, "I know, it was stupid. Stay with the car, Muppet."

"I never said it was stupid."

"You'd do the same for me," Michael adds.

Stella gives a short laugh. "You're right, I would. But not more than once."

"That's really, incredibly comforting." He resumes the fetal position, clearly ready for the conversation to be over.

"How long do you have to stay here?" Stella asks, taking in the uncheerful environment.

"Just overnight."

"Well, you might as well get comfortable," Stella says brightly. "Don't you at least want to take off your boots?"

He's afraid if he sits up, or moves too much, he's going to pass out. "Not particularly."

"You're the saddest thing I've ever seen," she teases. "And you are _not_ going to sleep with your boots on."

"I'm _not_ sleeping, Stel, that's sort of the point."

"All right," Stella shrugs, "suit yourself." And without asking she starts untying the laces. He doesn't fight it, doesn't say a word. There's something about a bloody, concussed Michael that brings out the mother hen in the people you'd least expect - first Kerry and now Stella.

Stella tugs off the first boot and starts working on the second. He has knotted the laces into a mess that no sailor or Boy Scout would recognize, and she has to pick at it with her fingernails. "So that was pretty impressive, what you did today." She still hasn't given up on getting a rise out of him.

"What are you talking about?"

"Whole bag of chips, thirty seconds."

He's already retreating. "It wasn't the whole bag."

"That doesn't matter," Stella laughs. "I'll make sure Lawson pays up."

Michael sounds even more pissed off than before. Who would have guessed that a bag of chips would be an even more sore subject than the bomb that nearly killed a teammate. "Bet's off."

Stella has finally made headway with the knots in his laces, and she is feeling victorious. "Nah, you won it fair and square."

"I puked in the ambo." He uncrosses his arms and she sees it dried onto the front of his shirt. "Don't tell Lawson. He'll make me clean it."

"I thought you smelled worse than usual," Stella says, wrinkling her nose. "Relax. You think you're the first person that's puked in an ambulance?" Stella is laughing now. "At least you weren't drunk, although I reckon you won't be able to tell the difference in the morning."

Michael smiles, but not very much. "I think I'd be enjoying myself a little more right now."

"Can I get you some clean clothes?" she offers. "I can go swing by your place."

"You don't have to do that."

Stella cocks her head at him, grinning. "Are you going to deprive me of the pleasure of digging through your underwear drawer?"

He looks at her, _really_ looks at her for the first time all evening, and he understands. She's going crazy too, waiting for news, and she doesn't have the pain of a concussion to distract her. "All right," he says. "My keys are over there. Just try not to break anything, okay?"

Michael's enemy on the nursing staff appears at the curtain. "Neuro check, Mr. Sandrelli."

He groans again. "It's only been like twenty minutes. Now I know you're torturing me." He looks up at Stella while the nurse waves a penlight in his eyes. "Look at this. No respect for a sworn officer of the law."

"Stop being so dramatic," Stella orders him, "you're going to be fine." She doesn't tell him that Grace has collapsed, that Dom's wife has given birth - there will be time for all that later. "See you later, Sandrelli."

"Later, Stel." He would hug her, and maybe kiss her, if the whole moving-his-head thing wasn't so painful. "Thanks."


End file.
